John Gould Fletcher Collection (VMF052), 1928-1962 | MSS Manuscripts

John Gould Fletcher (January 3, 1886 – May 10, 1950) was an Imagist poet, author and authority on modern painting. Some of Fletcher’s works include Irradiations: Sand and Spray (1915); Goblins and Pagodas (1916); The Black Rock (1928); Selected Poems (1938), for which he won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1939; and The Burning Mountain (1946).

Fletcher was born in Little Rock, Arkansas to a socially prominent family. After attending Phillips Academy, Andover, Fletcher went on to Harvard University from 1903 to 1907, when he dropped out shortly after his father's death. Fletcher lived in England for a large portion of his life. While in Europe he associated with Amy Lowell, Ezra Pound, and other Imagist poets, he was one of the six Imagists who adopted the name and stuck to it until their aims were achieved.

In the late 1920s and 1930s, Fletcher was active with a group of 11 other Southern writers and poets known as the Southern Agrarians. This group published the classic Agrarian manifesto I'll Take My Stand, a collection of essays rejecting Modernity and Industrialism. In 1937, he wrote his autobiography, Life is My Song, and in 1947 he published Arkansas, a beautifully written history of his home state.

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Acquisition Note: Source: Purchase from the House of Books and Henry Wenning.

Originally laid in The Black Rock by John Gould Fletcher PS3511 L457 B54 1928a

Accession number 1015 - Purchase from the House of Books, December 30, 1968.

Accession number 1094 - Purchase from Henry Wenning, October 13, 1969. (Correspondence from Fletcher to the Wagners and Magalaner)

Preferred Citation:Name of the Collection, Washington University Libraries, Department of Special Collections